28. An Argument for Organics

Several months ago, I received an email forward, a YouTube clip of a third-grade student presenting a science project. This eight- or nine-year-old girl had undertaken to grow sweet potato vines at home. Her project ended up morphing into something quite different—and quite sobering. 

She told how she and her grandma had bought a sweet potato at a grocery store and tried to sprout it in a jar of water. In three weeks’ time, nothing had happened. They bought another, thinking there must be something wrong with the first. Again, nothing. They went back and talked to a man in the produce department. He said, “These will never grow vines. At the farms, they’re treated with a chemical called ‘Bud Nip.’” Instead he got her one from the organic section. 

Over the period of a month, the new potato grew some “wimpy little vines.” Then the girl and her grandma went to an organic food market and bought yet another sweet potato. This one took off and quickly surpassed the growth of the other. 

She googled Bud Nip. “They also spray it on blueberries,” she says, “carrots, onions, spinach, tomatoes, beets, and cranberries.” 

Just for fun, I, too, bought a sweet potato at my local grocery store and another one from an organic outlet in Edmonton. The picture shows what they looked like after sitting in water for two months. (Apparently my potato from the mainstream store was not quite as dead as the little girl’s first two efforts.) 

And I, too, googled Bud Nip. It also goes by Chlorpropham and at least ten other names. Its regulatory status is such that products containing it must bear the signal word “Caution.” (Hello? Have you ever seen any such label in any produce department?) It is used for pre-emergent control of weeds in the various crops that the young girl mentions above and is also sprayed on, post-harvest, to prevent sprouting and to increase the shelf-life of root vegetables—plus legumes, seeds, and pretty much every kind of produce except for leafy things like spinach and lettuce. (Leafy stuff has its own chemical issues.) 

Chlorpropham penetrates through the entire vegetable, so washing it doesn’t help. It is shown to be toxic to honeybees, which are crucial to the pollination of these crops, and to amphibians (like frogs) and other aquatic life. Chlorpropham can cause irritation to the eyes or skin. Symptoms of acute toxicity in lab animals include listlessness, discoordination, nose bleeds, protruding eyes, bloody tears, breathing difficulties, exhaustion, inability to urinate, high fevers, and death.

Autopsies reveal permanent degenerative changes in the liver and kidneys, as well as congestion of the brain, lungs, and other organs. A farmer working with this chemical could be at risk for the degree of exposure that would constitute acute toxicity. Chronic toxicity, a little bit over a long period of time (ie, from eating the produce), can lead to anything from retarded growth to cancer. This chemical can also cross a mother’s placenta into the developing fetus. 

This is a pretty horrifying profile, and it’s just one of thousands of chemicals we’re unwittingly exposed to: just one good look at a single herbicide, never mind the myriad of other herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. The accompanying photograph alone is enough to make me want to eat organic. Did you know that most pesticides, herbicides, and nitrogen fertilizers used today are by-products of the petroleum industry? I don’t want to eat that stuff! 

But what I have come to understand in the past year is that eating organic is not just about avoiding what’s in our food that isn’t meant to be there, it’s also about getting what should be there and generally isn’t. Chemical farming is a double-edged sword. Through the knowledge of some of the local Hutterites and that of my own dear husband, I now understand that our soils are so damaged by chemicals that they have become simply an inert medium in which to grow crops artificially. 

Healthy soil contains tiny microbes that break down organic matter and convert macro-minerals, micro-nutrients, and trace elements into an ionic form that can be taken up by plants. Chemically abused soils are dead: they no longer contain these vital, living organisms. Hence, the crops grown in these soils do not contain the many nutrients they were designed to give us. We hear a lot of talk today about our depleted soils, but the fact is, even if the minerals might still there, we’re not getting them. The people who eschew nutritional supplements, saying, “I get everything I need from my food!” are sadly mistaken. Thanks to chemical fertilizers, our produce departments abound with lush-looking vegetables. But it’s an illusion, a deception. Besides being laced with who-knows-what chemicals, they are nutritionally impotent.

27. Still More Iodine?

Last week I left off with mention of a breakthrough in my health. I was at the ten-month point following my adrenal crash, still not much better and in some ways worse. It had already been a long, hard go. But it hadn’t been wasted. I wasn’t sorry that this affliction had come upon me: sometimes we can’t recognize how badly things need to change until it gets so bad that we cannot go on. 

The things that had to change in me were as follows: I had to learn to stop pushing myself beyond my limits. I had to get serious about feeding myself consistently, before my blood-sugar had a chance to go in the tank. I had to keep trying to get to bed by ten o’clock. I had to learn that I do not breathe normally when I’m focussed on the things I enjoy. 

A case in point: the thing that totally put me over the edge with my adrenals last spring was writing these health articles. Yep. Total irony. I’d work intensely, not realizing that I wasn’t breathing. I would suffer debilitating anxiety (because my low oxygen was telling my adrenals that we had a crisis at hand), yet never understanding why. So I would just keep going, even though I knew it was taking a terrible toll on my body. 

Rewind to August of 2010. I’ve been on iodine for nine months, beginning at 25 mg and increasing over time to 50 mg. From the six-week point and onward, I’ve been feeling no anxiety. Fantastic emotional resilience. Bear in mind that these doses are, respectively, 160 and 320 times the RDA. Now my hormone doctor was suggesting that I cut back to 12.5 mg. This dose, 12.5 mg, is generally considered to be a good maintenance dose, once you’ve replenished your body. So I found this plan copasetic. 

But in retrospect, I believe that from that point on, my iodine stores began to gradually diminish until, about six months later, I’m starting to struggle with anxiety again. Three months further, I’m crashed. Flat. 

Fast forward again to early March of this year: I’ve changed some habits, but I’m still not doing well. I decide to go for an iodine-load test. This is a lab test (it costs $100) to discover if you are deficient in iodine. Here’s how it works: You take a dose of 50 mg of iodine first thing in the morning. You collect all your urine for the next 24 hours and send a measured sample away to a lab in the US. If you have sufficient iodine stores, they expect at least 90% of that 50 mg dose to show up in the urine, indicating that the body doesn’t need much. 

Interestingly, the way this somewhat arbitrary 90% was settled upon was that they found each of the patients who expelled this percentage had, in the course of their iodine supplementation, come to the place of feeling great, both physically and emotionally. The others, whose bodies retained more than 10%, were still not feeling optimal. 

Another month went by as I waited for the results. Very early in the morning of April 11 (1:30 a.m. to be exact) I was awoken to a family crisis. When everything was finally resolved and I got back to bed, it was 4:00 a.m. But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there vibrating with misplaced adrenaline, feeling like I was levitating six inches off the bed. Eventually I slept fitfully for two hours but was unable to rest any more. 

By late afternoon, I was so strung out that I phoned my husband in tears. “I think I need to take some medication,” I said. He knew what a big deal this was. Twenty-seven months it had been since I’d used these pills, and it had been a terrific personal victory. 

He gently told me to do what I needed to do and not worry about it. So I did. The very next day, my hormone doctor called with the results of my lab test. “Bottom line,” she said, “you are not getting enough iodine.” I had expelled only 58% of the iodine. Who would have guessed that I was still deficient! And it turns out, the adrenals are one of the many glands and organs for which iodine is crucial. Immediately I increased my dosage. 

I continued to take my anti-anxiety medication because I was in such bad shape, but over the next three weeks I tapered down from two doses daily to zero as the extra iodine kicked in. Two months later I’m still improving physically and emotionally.

26. A Year in Retrospect

As I ride the mower along the edge of the bush around the outer parameter of the lawn, I see that the black currants are in blossom: tiny, delicate yellow blooms set against the bright green leaves. It takes me back to the beginning of June a year ago. 

The first day of June 2011 brought a much-anticipated event for our family: the U2 concert in Edmonton. Later, after a full evening’s entertainment, Melissa and I, having got separated from the other four, stood outside in a crowd of 60,000 people waiting to get on the LRT. After we’d stood for half an hour and not seen any progress, she suggested that we walk back to our parking spot, about three and a half kilometres away. She phoned the others, passed along the plan, and told them we’d meet them at the vehicles. 

She set out at a sizzling pace, her long legs eating up the metres. My legs are long too, but I haven’t near as much sizzle anymore. She is a long-distance runner, so her stamina is formidable. I tried to match her pace, breaking into a run intermittently to close the gap. 

Now bear in mind, it was almost midnight, and I had been up since 4:30 that morning. Dinner was a faraway memory, not a good thing for someone who tends toward low blood sugar. But I’ve always had this mentality that it’s good to push your body hard, that this is what makes us strong. This attitude comes from long-distance training back in my own distant youth. 

However, I’ve come to realize that this is a dumb idea, especially when there are other mitigating factors, like being overtired and hungry. And all this on the heels of several weeks of operating with uncontrollable anxiety. I was running on fumes; more accurately, as I understand now, I was running on adrenaline. Thirty minutes later we reached the vehicles, far ahead of the others. As I leaned against the truck, my equilibrium went strange for a few minutes and I found I was having trouble keeping my balance. 

The rest of the family caught up with us after a bit, and in due course we all got something to eat and got home to bed. I didn’t think any more about the demands I’d made on my body, until I got up four days later. I tried to go for a pleasant walk on a Sunday morning with my husband and found I simply could not do it. (Adrenals Amok, Blog #10). You may be wondering what all this has to do with the black currants being in blossom. Well, I’m getting to that. 

The following day I was still completely drained. I was pretty sure I had exhausted my adrenal glands. I looked up an email that had come from a reader less than three weeks earlier. She had written me about something called Ribes Nigrum, which “resets the adrenals.” On Google I discovered that this is the Latin name for black currant and that this remedy is made from the blossoms. I ordered a couple of bottles from a supplier in Ontario, wondering how long it would take to get here. 

I was feeling quite beside myself. I wanted to dig out my old anti-anxiety medication, but it had been 17 months since I’d used that crutch. I wasn’t going to give in without a fight. Midday I wandered outside in my robe and slippers, too tired to bother dressing. I climbed down the grassy embankment behind the house to the westerly edge of the lawn, looking for the currant bushes that grow wild there. They were in blossom. I picked a handful and chewed them slowly, thinking I must look like a real nut-case. They didn’t taste very good. 

To my amazement the Ribes Nigrum arrived the following day around noon. How is that even possible, ground shipping from Ontario? An answer to prayer for sure. I eagerly began on the suggested two-daily doses. 

Two days later found me at a naturopathic clinic in St. Albert that the same reader had mentioned. The doctor, after confirming my self-diagnosis, put me on an adrenal support product containing freeze-dried bovine adrenal and spleen, as well as 3000 mg of Vitamin C daily, and gave me some other directives. He indicated that it would take my adrenals about a year to recover. But taking stock in early April, the ten-month point, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t feel any better. In fact I felt like I was still losing ground. And then I had an amazing breakthrough, which I’ll talk about next time.

25. More Salt?

The last thing you expect to hear in a doctor’s office is encouragement to take more salt, but it happened to me. Here’s how it unfolded: I was at my hormone doctor’s clinic; this was just over a year ago. Into the little room came the doctor’s assistant to do the preliminaries. With her she brought a blood pressure monitor. 

“Oh, good!” I said. “I’ve been wanting to make sure my blood pressure is okay, because I’ve been taking extra salt.” 

“Good,” she responded. 

“Well,” I qualified, “I’ve been taking quite bit. Up to a teaspoon a day extra.” 

“Good,” she said again. “Take one to two teaspoon daily. But it has to be good quality sea salt.”

 “Absolutely,” I assured her. 

I had begun taking salt in my drinking water a few months earlier as a result of some articles I had read. I had wondered occasionally, though, whether I was throwing things out of whack. The monitor quickly confirmed, however, that my blood pressure was as low as ever. 

At this site, http://curezone.com/foods/saltcure.asp,* I have found 20-plus vital functions of salt in the body. For instance, unrefined salt is key in stabilizing irregular heart rhythm. And though reputed to exacerbate high blood pressure, it is actually essential for the regulation of both high and low blood pressure. 

Table salt, by contrast, is stripped of everything but sodium and chloride. Then: 

[T]o further prevent any moisture from being reabsorbed, the salt refiners add aluminosilicate of sodium or yellow prussiate of soda as desiccants plus different bleaches to the final salt formula. After these processes, the table salt will no longer combine with human body fluids; it invariably causes severe problems of edema (water retention) and several other health disturbances.*

Our bodies are also forced to function without the proper balance of the other 82 elements, causing subtle deficiencies and undiagnosable problems. 

In an article last summer, I shared about sea salt’s ability to regulate blood pressure, and a reader was subsequently challenged to try it. After a quintuple by-pass some ten years ago, he had maintained a strict, salt-free diet, and he monitors his blood pressure daily. He contacted me to let me know that since beginning to use sea salt on his food, his blood pressure is lower than it’s been in years. 

Salt is also apparently vital in the balancing of blood sugar levels; in digestion and clearing mucous; and preventing muscle cramps, varicose veins, and osteoporosis. It’s a natural antihistamine and also helps regulate sleep and maintain healthy libido. If you drool while sleeping, it’s an indication of salt deficiency. 

Here’s one that I found interesting personally:

When the body is short of salt, it means the body really is short of water. The salivary glands sense the salt shortage and are obliged to produce more saliva to lubricate the act of chewing and swallowing and also to supply the stomach with water that it needs for breaking down foods. Circulation to the salivary glands increases and the blood vessels become ‘leaky’ in order to supply the glands with water to manufacture saliva. The ‘leakiness’ spills beyond the area of the glands themselves, causing increased bulk under the skin of the chin, the cheeks and into the neck.*

Seventeen years ago I developed some severe problems after a performance of an hour and 40 minutes of singing and speaking. I lost my voice for a month (Try handling four young children without a voice!) and my neck swelled up on both sides right under the jawbone. My GP said I was carrying my stress in my neck and it was affecting my salivary glands. 

A dear old fellow in our church offered to pray for me; commanded those lumps to come out in the name of Jesus. I touched his arm and said good-humouredly, “No! Those lumps are my salivary glands. I need them!” 

Over time I came to recognize that vocal problems come with dehydration, but it was only when I read this article last year that I finally understood the physiology of this swelling that I’ve frequently had in my neck.

Just a year ago in January, during a wintery cold snap, I was speaking and singing at a Christian Cowboy retreat in Manitoba. On the second song, I lost my singing voice—went completely hoarse. It was brutal. By the end of the evening, my contacts were stuck to my eyeballs, and I realized then that something about the heating system in the place was zapping the moisture out of the air, and out of my body. The second evening, before I got up to share, I drank a pile of diluted orange juice with an extra teaspoon of salt, over and above my usual quota. I sang flawlessly. 

Salt. Don’t leave home without it!

24. Getting Wasted

One of the things that happens when your adrenals are severely fatigued, as mine have been this past year, is something called salt wasting. You begin losing sodium and water faster than you would normally take it in. This is because the production of all hormones from the adrenals is compromised, including the hormone that is responsible for maintaining electrolyte balance inside the cells. This is a mineralocorticoid called aldosterone. 

One of the symptoms of adrenal fatigue is debilitating exhaustion. These two things, the salt wasting and the exhaustion, go hand in hand. Supposing you have had a two-week bout of the flu, losing fluids at both ends. How do you feel? Like a limp dishrag, like you can’t even lift your head off the pillow, never mind put one foot in front of the other. If you managed to crawl into a doctor’s office, he would tell you that you need electrolytes. He might recommend a sports drink or an electrolyte mix from the pharmacy. I have a different, healthier, cheaper suggestion. But we’ll get to that a little later here. 

One day last summer as I dragged myself out of bed for the second time that day, I found a message on the phone from our daughter Melissa’s workplace in Edmonton. She had been taken to the emergency department of a hospital on the south side of the city. I mustered my focus and faked enough energy to get into my car. I drove up there, 45 minutes or so, not really feeling fit to drive. Once I got to her and was assured that she was feeling better—thanks to a lot of morphine, I could suddenly no longer hold my head up. She wanted to chat now, but I said, “Honey, I don’t even have the energy to speak right now.” 

I pulled my chair up close to her bed and plunked face and torso down. I descended into what was almost a comatose state. When they released her, I was faced with the challenge of driving her back to the north side of the city. I was feeling even more disoriented now. I wondered aloud whether I was safe to drive. Melissa suggested that maybe she should instead. 

“You’ve had three hits of morphine,” I replied. “I don’t think you’re safe—or legal.” 

Somehow we got there, and I crashed on her bed into a sound sleep for an hour. As I woke up, I had a clear inspiration about the salt-wasting thing. It had become my habit to drink salted water all day long, up to a total of 2 teaspoons of salt. But with the sudden change in my day that the phone message had brought, I now realized I hadn’t had any since about 6:00 that morning. I raided Melissa’s fridge, poured a tall glass of orange juice, dumped in a teaspoon and a half of Celtic sea salt, added enough water to make it palatable, and drank it down. The transformation I felt inside of 10 minutes was nothing short of astounding. When I say I felt great though, bear in mind that it’s all relative. Someone with adrenal fatigue does not experience the same kind of “great” as a person in full health. 

So, yes, unrefined sea salt, with its pedigree of 80-plus trace minerals, is of tremendous benefit to someone with stressed adrenals. I had already been using a teaspoon per day before my adrenal crash a year ago, so to recognize the symptoms of needing more was a simple thing, even before I read about salt wasting. And then my naturopath confirmed it, saying that I might possibly need up to 3 or 4 teaspoons daily. 

There are medications you can take to correct this salt wasting, essentially synthetic aldosterone. But the problem with this, even if you’re willing to go the pharmaceutical route, is that with the presence of these in the bloodstream signalling to the brain that all is sufficient, the adrenals will lose the prompting to make any of their own at all. If the patient goes off the medication, it may take a couple of years for the adrenals to start functioning on their own; worse, they may never recover that ability. Once you start this medication, you may be on it for a lifetime. So as difficult as the symptoms can be, I will give the medications a wide berth.

I asked my naturopath if there was anything natural that would help, and he said, “Yes—licorice.” Turns out this sweet-tasting root causes the kidneys to slow down their release of salt and water and to slightly raise the low blood pressure that usually goes hand in hand with adrenal problems. Care for a cup of licorice tea?

23. Reading Between the Lines

When we’re reading to educate ourselves on issues of personal health, it’s important that we learn to read between the lines. I am finding that there are two distinct camps out there: one is the mainstream; the other is alternative. The former is generally fuelled and powered—and influenced in philosophy—by Big Pharma. It urges you to leave your health in the hands of the “professionals” and not ask too many questions. 

The latter encourages one to take responsibility for one’s own health, while the former seems continually to throw out fear tactics regarding natural supplements and remedies, trying to scare us “lost sheep” back into the prescription-medication fold. 

However, as we weigh out different opinions and listen to our hearts, we will find there is a sense of which voices to trust. When I sat down to write my last article, Burzynski’s Battle, I decided to first run a Google search on the man just to see what general information I would find. I ended up at Wikipedia, and what I read there about him really set me back on my heels. His so-called cure for cancer, antineoplastins, does not—according to the article—work; he currently has a patient suing him for charging her nearly $100,000 for a cure that failed; and he was convicted of insurance fraud in 2010 for billing a health insurance company for use of an unapproved drug. 

Sounds really bad, doesn’t it? When I first read this, I felt my heart shifting in my attitude toward this man, this medical maverick who has become a martyr of the system. Had I been wrong in my whole perception of the issue? Then I sat down to review the movie again. In light of what I had just read on Wikipedia, certain parts of the movie leapt out in significance. When people began coming from all over the States to try the cancer cure, emissaries from the Texas Medical Board chased down various patients, trying to talk them into filing complaints against Burzynski. Most of them told the TMB to get lost. However, given that with some of the most severe cancers, antineoplastins have only a 25% cure rate (which fact is clearly spelled out in the film—and which is still a great improvement over the conventional treatments in these cases), it’s not hard to imagine that after almost 30 years the TMB would eventually find one disgruntled patient whom they could incite to legal action.

Antineoplastins don’t work? Perhaps because, as Burzynski: The Movie spells out, when the FDA finally agreed to oversee clinical trials, they refused to use them as directed by Dr. Burzynski. As far back as the mid-eighties, the FDA made it clear that they were no longer trying to deny the efficacy of Dr. B's treatments. Their pitch was to take away his medical license because his treatments were not “approved.” With human lives hanging in the balance, if the antagonists can concede that the treatment is effective, why must they bicker about red tape? As Jesus said, “You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.” 

The insurance fraud: no details are given. We’re not told that the treatment failed; only that it wasn’t approved. If the patient was treated, it seems reasonable for the doctor to make a claim for reimbursement. (I myself have had difficulty off and on with our extended health plan, as my prescriptions for bioidentical hormones often do not meet their criteria. Read: The drug companies that are in alliance with my benefit plan do not/cannot hold a patent on most bioidentical products. At least they didn’t sue me for insurance fraud for submitting the claim!)

The Wikipedia articles go on to criticize the documentary itself, calling it “one-sided,” saying that only those who are in support of Burzynski were interviewed. Hmm. The FDA refused to be interviewed on camera regarding their complaints against Burzynski. As I wrestled with trying to get a clear perspective on this whole subject, my son Ben pointed out that Wikipedia is, to a large extent, peer-written; that is, articles can be submitted by anyone, then information may be changed or expanded as contradictory or complementary material comes in. A good thing to remember. Like I said, we have to learn to read between the lines. 

By the way, my last article ended with mention of the TMB’s new court date (April 11) with Dr. Burzynski. News flash: April 5, the judges dismissed the majority of the case against Dr. B, causing the Texas Medical Board to seek indefinite postponement of the hearing as they scramble to regroup.

22. Burzynski’s Battle

Recently I watched a documentary, the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D. biochemist who has discovered the genetic mechanism that can cure most human cancers. The movie opens with a bereaved father giving testimony before a congressional subcommittee hearing, February 29, 1996. 

At the age of four, his daughter was diagnosed with a highly malignant brain tumour. The parents were given two options by mainstream medicine: massive radiation and chemotherapy or take her home to die. The radiation burnt her little skull so badly that she had second-degree burns on her scalp and her hair never grew back. Her urine was so toxic that her parents had to wear rubber gloves when they changed her diapers. 

She survived the awful treatment, but six months later the cancer was still there and the doctors said, sorry, they could do no more. The father and his wife, looking for alternatives, came across Dr. Burzynski’s work and were able to put their daughter under his care. The treatment was successful. A short while after being declared cancer-free, however, she died of “neurological necrosis”: her brain fell apart from the previous radiation. The autopsy confirmed the complete resolution of the tumour: out of 52 known cases of this particular cancer, this little girl was the only one to die cancer-free. 

Born in Poland in 1943, Stanislaw Burzynski graduated with an M.D. from the Medical Academy in Lublin in 1967, at the top of his class. A year later, at the age of 25, he received a Ph.D. in biochemistry. It was while doing research for his thesis that he made an amazing discovery: he found a strain of peptides in human blood and urine never before recorded. Then he discovered that people afflicted with cancer were lacking these peptides. Healthy people, by contrast, had an abundance. His theory was that if he could somehow extract these peptides from healthy donors and administer them to cancer patients, perhaps it would be helpful in treatment.

This is exactly, in a nutshell, what bore out. These antineoplastons, as Burzynski calls them, target the specific genes that allow cancer to grow and flourish. In 1976, he established the Burzynski Research Institute Inc. in Texas and began treating patients with these non-toxic compounds of proteins and amino acids, often with remarkable success. 

However, since the 1980s, Burzynski has been in a battle with the Texas Medical Board and the FDA. They haven’t been able to make stick their claims that the treatment is unsafe or ineffective: they cling instead to the complaint that there have been no FDA-approved clinical trials. 

At $25 million per trial, this is cost-prohibitive for this doctor and his small staff. Of the National Cancer Institute’s annual budget of $5,200,000,000, not a nickel has ever come Burzynski’s way. This makes no sense to the average person until the documentary takes us a little deeper. We see how “Big Pharma” has got the FDA neatly in their back pocket by having instituted an approval fee—of 1.4 million—for each new cancer drug they come up with. Pharmaceutical companies pay the FDA this fee “to assure a timely approval.” So we see that the FDA is essentially on the payroll of the very industry it regulates. Did someone say “conflict of interest”? 

The first court proceedings against Burzynski were at the state level with the plaintiff being the Texas Medical Board. The judge ruled in Burzynski’s favour, with the proviso that he not ship his medicine beyond the borders of Texas. However, when word spread regarding these cures, people came from all over the country. Some of these patients were approached by the Texas Board of Medical Examiners, trying to talk them into filing some form of complaint against Burzynski. 

Then the Board took Burzynski to a higher district court, fighting to suspend his medical license because his treatments had never been approved. They were no longer trying to question the effectiveness of his treatment: “The efficacy of antineoplastons in the treatment of human cancers is not of issue in these proceedings.” Dr. B won the round again. 

Now the FDA took it all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, trying to get Burzynski’s licence revoked. They, along with Big Pharma, realized that if Dr. B’s discovery was given a fair review process, chemotherapy and radiation treatment would dwindle into obscurity, financially crippling their industry; also those fat research monies might be diverted away from Pharma and into the lap of one scientist who holds exclusive patent rights. Declared Dr. Richard J. Crout, FDA Bureau of Drugs Director, “I never have and never will approve a new drug to an individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical firm.”

It was in 1983 that the FDA commenced civil action to try to close the clinic and stop patients from receiving the medicine. Before the judge announced her ruling, the FDA sent her a letter warning that if she ruled in Burzynski’s favour, they would be obliged to pursue other “less efficient remedies.” Nevertheless, Burzynski case won out. 

Frustrated, the FDA told Dr. B’s attorneys they had “other ways to get him.” In 1985 they convened a grand jury to try to indict him. In connection with that, they raided his clinic and home, seizing 200,000 pieces of paper including all his patients’ medical records, and mounted a propaganda campaign against his drugs, hoping to get the doctor thrown into jail. Result of the grand jury: no indictment. 

In 1986, another raid, another grand jury: no indictment. In 1990, another grand jury, no indictment. In 1994, another grand jury: no indictment. One wonders who was paying all these court costs. In 1995, yet another grand jury. The documentary goes on, mingling testimonials of stunning recoveries of cancer patients along with high intrigue, lies, and betrayal: a woman who teamed up for a while with Dr. B jumped ship and took all the info to a major pharmaceutical firm. 

The FDA finally agreed to clinical trials but a) insisted on having chemo and radiation done on patients first; b) took on patients with more extreme issues than the parameters agreed upon with Dr. B for a given protocol of the drug; and c) “watered down” the antineoplastons used. Perhaps this explains why some sources, including Wikipedia, say that antineoplastons don’t work. 

This documentary in many ways unfolds like a suspense-drama fiction, but the subject of the story is a real man, now 69 years old. One wonders how he has the stamina and financial resources to battle the powers that be and still continue to treat patients. This month, after a 15-year hiatus, the Texas Medical Board is again dragging him back into court, “attempting once again to strip Burzynski of his medical license for simply using ‘off-label’ medications on some of his cancer patients ..., despite outside oncologists hailing this therapy as the ‘wave of the future’ and countless calls to have the case dismissed.”